We Need a Better NAFTA

The new NAFTA is another corporate handout. It won't stem the outsourcing of good jobs or protect the rights of working people. Tell Congress the new NAFTA isn't good enough and to refuse to vote on it.

Like so many California families, Karim Bayumi of Anaheim, his wife and two young children are doing everything they can to scrape by.

Bayumi drives for a large rideshare company as his primary source of income. On March 11, Bayumi’s rate was cut from 80 cents a mile to 60 cents a mile, just barely above the government mileage reimbursement rate. No warning. No explanation. In an instant, a chunk of his income just disappeared.

Multinational corporations pressing Congress to adopt an updated version of the North America Free Trade Agreement shed over half a million U.S. jobs for trade-related reasons since NAFTA took effect, according to a new analysis of government data.

Early in the morning on Nov. 26, 2018, Dave Green, the president of Local 1112 of the United Auto Workers, which represents workers at a General Motors plant in Lordstown, Ohio, received a call from the plant’s personnel director. Green needed to be at the plant at 9 a.m. for a meeting. The personnel director rarely called Green, and when he did, it was almost always bad news. Green got into his car — a silver Chevy Cruze — and sped toward the hulking 6.2-million-square-foot factory, which had manufactured nearly two million Cruzes since the car was introduced in 2011.

On May 4, 1886, thousands of workers rallied together in Chicago’s Haymarket Square to campaign for an eight-hour workday—initiating a tradition of protest for some of the most basic human rights. That was formalized on May 1, 1890, when the first International Workers’ Day was celebrated around the world.

On April 11, at 1:15 p.m., the 31,000 workers at Stop & Shop, the largest supermarket chain in New England, walked off the job to protest proposed cuts to their health care, wages, and retirement.

The bakers, cashiers, stockers, deli clerks and butchers who are members of the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union not only provide an invaluable service to millions of customers, they also made Stop & Shop’s parent company, Ahold Delhaize, over $2 billion in profits in 2018.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka cautioned the public not to become “numb” to workplace fatalities and illnesses, as his organization released its annual report detailing the hazards workers face every day.

The debate over the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) spans more than 25 years. The trade deal was originally negotiated by the first Bush administration, then came up for a vote early in President Clinton’s first term with opposition from a broad coalition of Democrats, unions, some environmental groups, family farmers and others.